Madonna and Generation X women

I’ve just read a fascinating critique of Madonna’s life and divorce in the Sunday Times’ News Review section. If rumours are to be believed, her marital breakdown was caused by the imbalance of power between Madonna and husband Guy Ritchie. Far more interesting than yet another celebrity couple’s public divorce is the role Madonna’s has played as a leader of women.  Modern Madonnites face frustration and dilemma. Desiring to be strong and powerful, confident in their sexuality, it is beginning to dawn on some that female power comes at the cost of emasculating men to the point of female revulsion.

Madonna, despite being a global superstar worth £300m, remains a perfect mirror of her female fan base…We may not prance around on stage aged 50, looking freakishly toned and wearing tiny leotards, but, like Madonna, many of us were bad girls in our twenties, good girls (and mothers) in our thirties and divorced some point in the following decade or two…

Now, aged 50 and with little left to prove, she’s readying herself to go solo…As often is the case, divorce at a later age, for Madonna, isn’t the impromptu version of divorce from one’s youth: by all accounts the Ritchies have tried hard to make their marriage work…

…what it boils down to…is that Madonna, and Madonna’s needs and Madonna’s desires, had an emasculating effect on her husband; that she noticed, didn’t find it attractive and agreed that enough was enough.

Madonna’s marriage has gone wrong for all the modern reasons, which is apt, because she is all the aspects of modern womanhood rolled into one. You do slightly get the feeling that there is no hope for modern marriage, because if she, with all her determination and resourcefulness and loathing of failure, can’t manage to make hers work, then there is little hope for the rest of us.

Generation X men

Here are some great quotes from an article by Joanna Cruickshank in the Costa Blanca News on the phenomenon of male kidults (July 2008.)

The “Ben Jones” syndrome:

• “the number of male singles has reached record levels in Britain and Spain.”
• “somewhere along the road the British man has lost his role in a feminised society.”
• “it has given rise to numerous men over the age of 30 acting and dressing like confused teenagers.”
• “we’re the disposable generation addicted to the emotional rush of upgrading.”
• “today’s 30-something men [are] refusing to grow up”
• “…and will continue to as long as the thrill of our careers and consumerism and technology seduce us into an illusion of happiness.”
• “I travel back to England often and am noticing this new phenomenon of ‘teenage man.’ more than ever. Men in their 30s dressing like rebellious teenagers…”
• “Is it any wonder household debt is soaring as these men seek instant gratification.”
• “there are many Spanish men whose lives revolve around their all consuming jobs rather than a wife and kids being the core of their happiness.”
• “I am seduced by the idea that the perfect man, job and lifestyle exist out there but I know that the striving for it, the hope of it, is more important than actually achieving it.”
• “Men in their 30s and 40s are reading Harry Potter and their new favourite films are Batman or The Incredible Hulk. At the weekends they will be purchasing their new favourite CDs or playing on the Nintendo Wii or worse crying into a pint like a child with attention deficit disorder because their football team lost.”
• “The structures of society have altered massively in Britain. More than ever football and alcohol fuelled occasions have replaced a sense of solidarity, family and community.”

Masculinity needs definition and that definition comes from the word of God. Biblical men are real men, moulded by their maker and not by their culture. Sadly, the stereotypical media image of a Christian man; nice but wet, spineless, soft skinned, bumbling and naive, militates against the gospel being the solution in most people’s minds. Christian men must be willing to suffer patiently for Christ, by dying to self-indulgence and living and dying for their wives and family, church and community. This is part of what biblical men do, the rest comes as we work through scripture and mine the depths of the wisdom of God.

More hear the call to the inner city (part 2)

An article in today’s Telegraph highlights the need for inner city mission: Girl, 13, who smokes drinks and has sex ‘rewarded’ by mother with cigarettes.

A 13-year-old girl who has had four sexual partners, smokes dope, drinks beer and has been excluded from school 40 times is considered “sweet” by her mother and given cigarettes as rewards for good behaviour.

The article raises the instinctive reaction “this is all wrong, someone needs to step in.” Who will do it? The media and chattering classes won’t. They will retreat behind security gates and CCTV systems and from a place of comfort point the finger and say “eeeewwwwweeeooo, that’s disgusting” (Romans 2); the well meaning left-wing council workers will see Tracy Holt and her miscreant daughter as a political project worthy of attention for the sake of some social statistic. I’ve noticed that most council employees don’t live in the areas they see as needy, but travel in to work. And so, Christians need to pile into the inner city, set up churches, live in the area, get to know and love people and take with them the redeeming and transforming word of Christ, who died for sin to free us from slavery to sin (Romans 10:13-17). We need to go not simply for the sake of Sam Holt, but for the glory of Christ, who will look beautiful when people get saved, accepted and sorted (Romans 15:7).

Here’s a post from Andy Mason on why we should pour our resources into planting (or strengthening?) churches in the inner city. The post is great because Andy challenges socially conservative evangelicals to get out of their narrow social bands and to do the hard work of reaching people not like us with the gospel of Christ.

More must hear the call to inner city part 1.

The good grieving guide (part 3)

I was asked to read 1 Corinthians 13:8-13 at a funeral last week. It had never occurred to me that this reading is a great help for those who are grieving.

Every grieving person realises, to varying degrees, that love does not end at death. Death does not remove love, only the object of that love. The Apostle Paul writes, “love never ends” (verse 8). The level of our grief is directly related to how much we loved someone. Spouses and parents grieve more than anyone because their love is greatest.

It’s been 30 years since 13-year old Stourbridge paper boy, Carl Bridgewater was shot dead at point blank range by burglars at Yew Tree Farm. In a recent interview in a local paper, his parents speak openly about their ongoing grief. Love never ends. Grief is wanting to express that love but being denied the opportunity. Death is truly our greatest enemy, nothing has the potential to hurt us like the death of someone we love.

And yet, in 1 Corinthians 13, we find that God has provided the way for us to find relief from part of this pain. It is ours to have by faith. We will never bring the person back, but we can live in hope. Paul tells us that what we see around us is in perfect and that one day it will pass away and the perfect will come (verse 10). And so Paul has faith in God and hope in a time when everything will be made right once more. When the imperfect passes away there will be no more hospitals, no more hankies to dry our tears and no more hearses or funeral directors or ministers like me. Paul says that today we see as if in a mirror dimly, but in that day we shall see God face to face.

Then, as we grieve, we can ask, “why?” “Why does it have to be this way?” “I don’t understand!” “Why now?” “Why him?” “Why in such a cruel or wicked way?” These sorts of questions are natural but unanswerable. Paul tells us in this passage that we only have partial knowledge (verse 12). We don’t know why things happen the way they do, because we can’t know everything. And yet when we meet God face-to-face he will explain why everything happened the way it did. God knows fully as he knows us fully (verse 12). There’s nothing he doesn’t know about us. Is and that amazing he knows everything there is to know he knows we’re going through and he understands were going through.

And so, at the end of the passage we find one of the greatest verses in the Bible. And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love and the greatest of these is love (verse 13).

Three things are all we need, writes Paul: faith, hope and love. He explains that our faith must have an object, in chapter 15 he writes:

1 Corinthians 15:1-6 Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you- unless you believed in vain. 3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.

The death and resurrection of Christ for sin produces hope through faith. But faith and hope are not as great as love, because when believers see God face-to-face we will not have to have faith in his Son or to hope that his gospel is true, these two will no longer be required. But love will remain because love never ends.

Good grieving guide part 1, part 2 and part 4

How patience makes a man

In a recent conversation with James Lawrence from CPAS, we talked about the crisis of masculinity affecting western men. If the feminist movement was a reaction to male dominance, men now need to work out together what it is to be a man in today’s world. Men have very passively gone along without thinking for a very long time and it shows. The kidult phenomenon where grown men live like pubescent boys until well into their thirties, is alive and well in our nation. Men play computer games for hours each day, use pornography, chase girls, shirk responsibility, binge drink, get upset at the smallest provocation, drive fast, play loud music, entertain themselves, live for comfort and passion.

This quote from Thomas Watson is a brilliant insight to contemporary pop male culture and what needs to change. Patience in suffering makes a man:

The third suffering grace is patience. Patience is a grace made and cut out for suffering. Patience is a sweet submission to the will of God, whereby we are content to bear anything that he is pleased to lay upon us. Patience makes a Christian invincible. It is like the anvil that bears all strokes. We cannot be men without patience. Passion unmans a man. It puts him beside the use of reason. We cannot be martyrs without patience. Patience makes us endure (James 5: 10). …Patience overcomes by suffering. A Christian without patience is like a soldier without arms. Faith keeps the heart up from sinking. Patience keeps the heart down from murmuring. Patience is not provoked by injuries. It is sensible but not peevish. Patience looks to the end of sufferings.

This attitude to suffering must be put in the context of the gospel if men are to avoid a dour, melancholy suffering. The habit of patient, joyful suffering, of willingly laying our bodies on the line, dying to self, and living for Christ, happily loving and dying for our wives, our families, our churches, our communities and people in the scary cultures outside our own safe (evangelical) Christian cliques, only makes sense in light of the death of Christ, which J. Gresham Machen puts like this:

“It is a strange thing that when men talk about the love of God, they show by every word that they utter that they have no conception at all of the depths of God’s love.

“If you want to find an instance of true gratitude for the infinite grace of God, do not go to those who think of God’s love as something that cost nothing, but go rather to those who in agony of soul have faced the awful fact of the guilt of sin, and then have come to know with a trembling wonder that the miracle of all miracles has been accomplished, and that the eternal Son has died in their stead.”

How a love of Jesus enables suffering

Commenting on “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake”, Thomas Watson shows that it is the love of Christ and not stoicism which enables the true Christian believer to suffer for the righteousness of Christ:

Love is passive; it enables to suffer. A man that loves his friend will suffer anything for him rather than he shall be wronged… Love made our dear Lord suffer for us. …So love will make its way to Christ through the prison and the furnace.

But all pretend love to Christ. How shall we know that we have such a love to him as will make us suffer? I answer: True love is a love of friendship, which is genuine and ingenuous when we love Christ for himself. There is a mercenary and meretricious love, when we love divine objects for something else. A man may love the queen of truth for the jewel at her ear, because she brings preferment. A man may love Christ for his ‘head of gold’ (Canticles 5:11), because he enriches with glory. But true love is when we love Christ for his loveliness, namely, that infinite and superlative beauty which shines in him, as Augustine says, ‘We love Jesus on account of Jesus’; that is, as a man loves sweet wine for itself.

True love is a love of desire, when we desire to be united to Christ as the fountain of happiness. Love desires union. The soul that loves Christ is ambitious of death because this dissolution tends to union. Death slips one knot and ties another.

True love is a love of benevolence, when so far as we are able we endeavour to lift up Christ’s name in the world. As the wise men brought him ‘gold and frankincense’ (Matthew 2: 11), so we bring him our tribute of service and are willing that he should rise though it be by our fall. In short, that love which is kindled from heaven makes us give Christ the pre-eminence of our affection. …Indeed we can never love Christ too much. We may love gold in the excess, but not Christ. The angels do not love Christ to his worth. Now when love is boiled up to this height, it will enable us to suffer. ‘Love is strong as death’. The martyrs first burned in love, and then in fire.

Follow the Saviour (Wolverhampton version)

I posted an extended prayer of confession from Colin Buchanan’s “Follow the Saviour” CD a couple of weeks ago.

We changed the Australian place names in this song to make it local. If you live in Wolverhampton or the Black Country, do buy the CD, use the instrumental version of the song and sing along. I changed the names having just arrived in Wolverhampton, not realising that there’s a large regional hospice at Compton and many nursing homes and a psychiatric hospital in Penn.

Follow the Saviour

1. Grown ups from Wolverhampton
Kids from Blakenhall
Mums and dads from Wednesbury
Folks from Merry Hill

Chorus
Follow the Saviour, Jesus the King
Glorify the Lord of everyone and everything.

2. Sinners from Upper Gornal
Saints from Monmore Green
Though your sins be red as scarlet
God can wash you clean

3. To the sad ones in Penn and Compton
The weak in Parkfields west
Jesus calls, ‘Come take my yoke
And I will give you rest.’

4. The proud, the poor, the sick, the rich,
To all across the land
Everlasting hope is yours
If you’ll just take his hand.

Anti-Homogenous church in Romans

I preached an overview of Romans chapters 1 to 11 (yes, 11 chapters) yesterday and used these two photos to introduce the talk:

Why these two photos? I wanted a contemporary image to help us to grasp as church just how radical justification by faith alone is. Paul’s letter was addressed to Jewish Christian believers; steeped in centuries of Jewish custom, culture and law, and to Roman believers; freshly converted out of a culture of shrines, idols, gods and godesses, incense, prostitution, girly bars, predatory sex. Rome was a sort of cross between Bangkok and Brighton, but more perverse, perhaps.

(I don’t know who the guys the the second photo are, and do not mean to imply that they are personally sexually deviant. The two slides merely contrast Jewish orthodoxy with contemporary western pop culture. The radical thing about the gospel is that, assuming they all have saving faith, these guys should accept and love each other as brothers!)

Paul was writing to the church in Rome, one community of believers. Justification by faith alone is radical because it means churches, as in Rome, should be made up all sorts of people who accept and love each other in spite of their cultural and moral differences. Paul’s letter instructs these two groups of Christian believers to accept each other as God had accepted them, to stick together for the praise of God (15:7). A fear of God’s wrath, living trust in the death of Christ for sin and a penitent spirit is all we need to be saved and therefore all we need to accept each other. This is the glorious doctrine of justification without works.

My outline of chapters 1-11 went like this:

Introduction it’s all about faith, from faith to faith, the righteous are justified by faith (1:8, 1:16-17)

1. We have a problem, God’s wrath (1:18)

2. Human solutions don’t work: hedonistic Romans, self-justifiers and legalistic Jews are all in the same boat on stormy seas and they will be overwhelmed and sunk by God’s wrath (1:19-3:20)

3. Righteousness (getting right with God) is the gift of God received by faith in Christ’s work of propitiation on the cross (3:21-4:25), there is no distinction (between Jew and Greek) because all have sinned and are under wrath.

4. Faith gives all believers peace with God (5:1-21)

5. And freedom from slavery to sin (6:1-23)

6. The 3-fold function of the law is to teach, convict and drive us back to Christ (7:1-25)

7. This sort of saving faith leads to adoption by God as his children (8:1-17)

8. It is as simple as: if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. (Romans 10:9) For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. 11 As the Scripture says, “Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame.” 12 For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile– the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, 13 for, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”

9. If we are adopted and loved by God then we must accept and love each other, regardless of external appearances, cultural differences and even moral behaviour (15:7)

Paul’s concern is for Jew and Gentile to accept each other on the basis of justification by faith alone and not to conform to the patterns of this world (12:1-2). What does the world do? It forms groups of people who are like each other, and Christ’s church is to be the exception.

Anti-Homogenous church in Ephesians

I’m aware that I haven’t given much biblical support for hetrogenous church on this blog. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is, perhaps, the most obvious place to look for an anti-homogenous church theology. The church in Ephesus has a mixture of Jewish Christians and Gentile believers. The Jewish Christians appear to have believed that their historical lineage made them somehow superior to the Gentile believers, who were beginning to see themselves as second class church members, mere after-thoughts in God’s plan of salvation. The two groups were in danger of polarising and forming separate Christian communities.

Peter O’Brien writes in his commentary that Ephesians 1:9-10 sets the theme for the whole letter.

Ephesians 1:9-10 he made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ, 10 to be put into effect when the times will have reached their fulfillment– to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.

This makes great sense of the opening verses of the chapter, as Paul gives at least three reasons why the Ephesians should stick together:

1. Every Christian believer is equally blessed by God, Jewish Christians have no more blessings than Gentile believers. “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.” Ephesians 1:3
2. Every Christian believer was chosen by God at the same time, before the creation of the world, so there are no afterthoughts, unplanned pregnancies, second class Christians. “For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.” Ephesians 1:4-5
3. The way of redemption is the same for everyone, through the blood of Jesus (Eph 1:7) so that no one can boast (Eph 2:8).

And so, Jewish Christians and Gentile believers, “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. 4 There is one body and one Spirit– just as you were called to one hope when you were called– 5 one Lord, one faith, one baptism; 6 one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” Ephesians 4:3-6

Paul’s anti-homogenous church theology was based on God’s purpose of uniting all things in heaven and on earth in Christ. Churches which form along homogenous lines, in multi-cultural settings like Ephesus, deny by their very existence that redemption is by grace through faith alone. If we form culturally homogenous groups, it becomes clear to outsiders that it is our culture and not the gospel which unites us. We need to work hard on cultural diversity in culturally diverse communities, as a witness to the power of salvation through faith in Christ alone.

Carson on 5 trends in the church today

Thanks to Peter Cockrell for posting his notes from Don Carson’s talk at Bethlehem Baptist Church last Friday. In a nutshell, Carson seems to be saying:

1. there’s lots of detailed academic knowledge but little mission in today’s church
2. churches are “clumping” around non-core values
3. mainline churches are losing mission minded, determined men because of the distractions of fighting over bygone (largely liberal) issues
4. social concern should go hand-in-hand with but not trump the gospel
5. neonomianism is a big problem in the church

Each issue is arguably caused by an absence of the cross in church life. When the cross is decentralised other things become more important, don’t they?